Social media cloud – What does it mean?

The term social media cloud can lead one to confusion and wonder what the tech geeks are up to next. Can this not be simpler?

The tipping point, as far as complete and unconditional corporate acceptance of social media is concerned, came when the number of social media users jumped past the number of email users in 2010 and coincided with the boom in mobile computing.

There are now well over a billion social network users, and companies are now waking up to the fact that their own workforce is a part of this revolution. Instead of prohibiting employees from using social networks, companies are now buying tablets for their workforce and urging them to be available 24/7 and use it for both internal communication and collaboration, as well as for official interaction with customers and others outside the company.

You will find that social media is no longer about just putting up a Facebook page, uploading a few videos on a YouTube channel and opening a Twitter account. It is now well-integrated alongside traditional channels in CRM and HCM systems, with social media monitoring tools used to mine and filter the sea of information for relevant data.

Customer service is now done by consolidating all interactions in one place. Clients can be contacted or responded to on Twitter and Facebook, and the interaction will be tracked and the metrics and status updates available just as they are for phone or email interaction.

Social media cloud – Facebook or Linkedin?

The other half of it is about employee collaboration, or what is being called as the “Social Enterprise.” You can now create secure internal or public social networks and track employees as they use it instead of email and meetings to communicate and find information. Based on tracking statistics, such tools have been responsible for boosting productivity by as much as 30 percent or more.

CIONNE can provide customers and employees with a platform for social interaction and offers you a chance to create your very own repository. One such repository that will not require to be filtered and can be used directly as a data source and marketing and communications channel. Excerpts and relevant comments from trusted social network sources can be directly piped into web pages and catalogs using web-based content management systems that can be integrated with social network tools, like the Salesforce Siteforce system.

Salesforce is perhaps the best example of how a cloud-based CRM can function effectively as part of a social enterprise platform. Their arsenal includes Radian6 and Data.com for monitoring the networks, and Chatter for the employee social network. This entirely works alongside Salesforce CRM at the platform’s core. IBM is similarly offering their Smartcloud for social business, with greatly enhanced collaboration tools to help your employees work together on cloud platforms.

The best part for you will likely be that none of this needs to be an expensive reboot with IT investments required for including social media as a part of your CRM and HCM systems. Experts at CIONNE provides customers Cloud based CRM solutions with social media tools as a service without any up-front investment, on a pay as you go basis and helps you in migrating from an on-premise to cloud based CRM model if you have not already done so.

Author: Cloud Consultant at CIONNE.com.

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